“Yeah?”
“We’ve been pursuing several avenues here, and a couple are really moving for us. We’ve been in contact with Elisha Francisco, the aide to Senator George Forrester. Forrester is head of the Senate Budget Committee, and he’s on the Armed Services Committee, and he’s been in a kind of a feud with the Air Force for about four years. So his office is always receptive to ammunition for this feud, and when I gave Francisco the facts of our case he jumped on the matter instantly.”
“And what can they do?” McPherson asks cautiously.
“They can do a lot! Essentially the GAO, the Congress’s watchdog, was steamrolled in our case, and Congress is touchy about being ignored like that. Senator Forrester has already asked the Procurements Branch of the Office of Technology Assessment for an independent report on the matter. That should be really interesting, because the OTA is as far out of the pressure points as you can be in this town. Procurements Branch at OTA has the reputation of being the most impartial assessment group that you can bring to bear on the military. Anyone in Congress can ask them for a report, and no one else has any leverage on them at all, so they pride themselves on giving a completely unbiased spread of the pros and cons, on anything. Nerve gas, biological warfare, persuasion technology, you name it, they’ll give you a report on it that sticks to technological efficiency and only that.”
“So we might see the report that the GAO should have made?”
“That’s right. And Forrester will hammer the Air Force with it, too, you can bet on that.”
“Can he get the Stormbee decision thrown out, then?”
“Well, not all by himself. There’s no mechanism for it, see. The best that could happen is that the Secretary of the Air Force would knuckle under to Congress’s prodding, but that isn’t too likely, no matter how much Forrester hammers them. However, if there were another appeal by LSR moving forward at the same time as this—if we appeal the decision to a higher court, and all this other stuff is breaking in Congress, then a new judge will almost certainly overturn Tobiason’s decision, and you’ll be back in business.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. So we’re sending a letter to you and to Argo/Blessman advising you to authorize us to initiate an appeal, but I wanted to tell you about it since you’re the liaison, so you can do what needs to be done at your end.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on it. So—so, you think we have a chance with this?”
“It’s better than that, Dennis. Senator Forrester is one of the most powerful people in Washington, and he’s a good man, as straight as they come. He doesn’t like what he’s heard about this, and he’s not one to forget. I think it’s our turn at last.”
“Great.”
McPherson writes a memo to Lemon immediately after the phone call, outlining what he has learned and suggesting immediate approval of the appeal.
As he writes down the facts, his hopes come flooding back. It seems to him, all of the sudden, that the system might really work after all. The network of checks and balances is almost suffocating in its intricacy—it is perhaps too intricate; but what that means in the end is that power is spread out everywhere, and no one part of the network can cheat another, without the balance of the whole being upset. When that happens the other parts of the network will step in, because their own power is threatened if any other part gains too much; they’ll fly in with a check like a hockey defenseman’s, and the balance will be restored. The Air Force tried to assert that it was above the system, outside the network; now the rest of the network is going to drag them back into it. It’s the American way, stumbling forward in its usual clumsy, inefficient style—maddening to watch, but ultimately fair.
So, feeling better about that, he spends the rest of the day working on the Ball Lightning program. And here too he sees signs of some progress, signs that they might possibly reach the deadline with a workable system. The programmers have come to him chattering with excitement about a program that will successfully latch the beams from several lasers to a missile, in a phased array; this vastly increases the intensity of the beam, so that the shock pulse will work again. They also believe they can track the missiles past the boost phase, by extrapolating their courses very precisely. Combine that with the shorter dwell time offered by the phased array and… they might just be able to knock down the percentage specified by the Air Force. It could happen. Even though it may take them into the post–boost phase a bit.
Spurred by the possibility, McPherson wheedles, coaxes, and bullies Dan Houston into reactivating his brain and doing his share of the work; it will take a push effort by everyone to get the job done in time, a sort of phased array of effort. And Houston is a mess. He’s never mentioned to Dennis the evening at El Torito when Dennis had to help him down to his car; but now it’s clear to Dennis that that was not a particularly unusual evening. Dan is drinking heavily every day; he needs a haircut, sometimes he needs a shave, his clothes look slept in; really, he’s the stereotype of the man whose ally has left him, whose life is falling apart. Sometimes Dennis wants to snap at him, say, “Come off it, Dan, you’re living a video script!”
But then it occurs to him that Houston’s pain is real enough, and that this is the only way he knows how to express it, if he is consciously living the role. And if not, it’s just what happens when you don’t care anymore, when you’ve lost hope, when you’ve started drinking hard.
So McPherson takes him out to lunch, and listens to his whole sad story, which he is now willing to talk about openly—“The truth is, Mac, Dawn has moved up to her folks’.” “Oh, really?”—and Dennis gives him a pep talk, and talks to him in intense detail about what needs to be done by Houston and Houston’s part of the team, and he even refuses to allow Houston to order another pitcher of margaritas, though that only gets him a look of dull resentment. “Do it after work if you have to, Dan,” McPherson snaps, irritated with him. Stewart Lemon tactics? Well, whatever it takes; they don’t have much time left.
And the fact is, Houston puts in a better afternoon’s effort than he has in weeks and weeks. By God, McPherson thinks, looking over his list of Things To Do before he goes home—we might pull it off after all.
68
Jim sleeps on his living room couch through the day, curled on his side around a tensely knotted stomach. He wakes often, each time more exhausted than the last. Every time he gains enough autonomy to pull himself upright, he calls Hana. No answer, no answering machine. More uneasy, unrestful sleep. His dreams are sickening, the problems in them more outlandishly insoluble than ever before. In the last of them he dreams he and all his friends have been captured by the Russians and held in the Kremlin. He tries to escape through a pinball machine, but the glass top slides back too quickly and cuts off his head. He has to climb back out and go through the ordeal of finding his head without the help of his eyes, then place the head back on his neck and balance it there very carefully. No one will believe he is walking around with his head chopped off. Premier Kerens, in a uniform with lots of medals, is flanked by Debbie and Angela and Gabriela, all wearing nothing but underwear bottoms. “Okay,” the premier says, holding up a device like an artificial hand that will cut out hearts. “You choose which one goes first.”
He wakes up sweating, his stomach clenched as if by cramp.
About two P.M. he tries Hana again, and she answers.
“Hello?”
“Ah? Oh! Hana! It’s Jim. I’ve… been trying to get hold of you.”
“Have you.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t home. Listen, ah, Hana—”